Health-care law's backers, critics add voices in suit

The fevered dispute over the new federal health-care law has descended on a Florida courthouse, with politicians, scholars and advocacy groups seeking to have a say in a federal lawsuit challenging the statute's constitutionality. Friday was the deadline for proponents and critics to ask the judge presiding over the case to let them submit briefs in the largest of several lawsuits that have been lodged across the country.

In the hours before Friday's court deadline, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), the presumptive next House speaker, filed motions asking to weigh in on the lawsuit. So did a group of nearly three dozen economics scholars, including three Nobel laureates, organized by a health policy adviser to President Obama's 2008 campaign.